


Old Soldiers And Their Scars

by aliitvodeson



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Crack Fluff, Drinking, M/M, Memory Loss, No Plot, Old Friends, Weird Fluff, basically just me writing what I want to happen between these characters, blend of comic canon and movie verse, friendship fluff, rebonding, writing dump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:29:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3542816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliitvodeson/pseuds/aliitvodeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a joke in here somewhere, Steve thinks, looking around the table at the three other men. Something about war veterans, and old whiskey, and greying hairs. But the only one who looks like he belongs there is the one whose standing up to leave, and the man who has the grey hair of an old man is the one who was born last.<br/>A joke just wouldn't be right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Soldiers And Their Scars

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a ficlet drawing from various sources - Xmen movie history, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Xmen Evolution television show, and standing comic book history. Please try not to look too hard into how it matches up.

The first call comes after the Battle of New York, on the cell phone he'd left sitting on the table while he worked on a drawing, trying to recapture how it felt to hold a pencil in his fingers. For a moment he fumbles, and the call nearly goes to voice mail. He doesn't know the voice on the other end, but he can't deny the way the words resonate with him. He asks who he's talking to, and the man pauses before saying, "just someone you once saved, Herr Captain. A boy in Poland who owes you everything." The caller hangs up before he has the chance to say your welcome.

A few months after he brings Bucky home to the tower, the elevator opens and though he has his back to the rest of the Avengers, he senses the way they all freeze up, like they're all mentally planning the best line of attack and the intercom by the fridge lights up, letting Steve know that Tony's activated the suit and they've only got to hold it for eight seconds before he's properly defended. He turns, slowly, and the man in a black leather jacket holds out a dusty bottle of whiskey. "Told you I'd hold onto this for you, Captain." He puts it on the counter while Natasha stares at him with narrowed eyes, and he's already turning to go when Bucky and Steve say in the same voice, "James?"

Standing in the middle of the lounge, half turned towards the elevator, the man briefly bows his head. "I go by Logan these days."

"How are you alive," Steve questions, while Bucky shuts his mouth and gives the man a through look over.

"You know me, Captain. Hard to put down."

Steve wants to ask how Victor is, why James is even still alive let alone looking the same as he did all those years ago, what point of that skin tight black uniform is. But James' already stepping back into the elevator, and he doesn't feel like making the man come back when he so clearly wants to be gone, and there's a note on the whiskey bottle with a phone number and an invitation to call once he and Bucky have finished it off.  
Natasha helps with that part, and explains that most of the world knows the man as Wolverine, a member of the strange mutant super hero team, and Bucky makes a quip about that explaining "a lot of things, but would someone explain the leather?"

They meet a month later, in Steve's new apartment down town, and James walks in with another man shortly behind him, who looks as old as Steve's supposed to be, and who carries a gym bag that James glares at and mutters something about the Professor being out of town anyways. The man gives James a knowing smiling and turns to Steve, offering his hand. "Forgive me, but Logan told me about this little meeting. I don't think you'll remember me, but-"

It's the voice he remembers, and the strange message about being a credit to his species and the comment about a boy in Poland. He nods, and shakes the man's hand, carefully light given the man's apparent age. "You called, after New York."

James chuckles, and moves to pour drinks. Steve doesn't want to think about how he knows where Tony hid the good whisky. "Weren't you on holiday with Chuck during New York, Mags?"

The man opens his mouth to reply, then closes it. Steve turns, and follows his gaze to the doorway, where Bucky is standing with three bags of groceries in his hand. His jacket covers his arm, so Steve can't possibly understand what's causing the man's face to turn as white as a sheet. Logan's put down the bottle he was drinking from, hands going into fists. "My god," says the stranger, and Steve really feels like he should know him. Bucky's face is doing a fairly good impression of how Steve feels. "It was you."

"Dallas, Texas. Target, unknown. Complications attributed to unknown person. Mission successful. " Bucky does this some times, spits out information like he's reporting for HYDRA, giving the details of missions in a way that makes Steve's chest ache. Bucky's eyebrows pull together, out of the blank slate his expression had been where he said those words. Steve sees James coming up from the corner of his eye. "Who are you? How do I know you?"

"Him, Erik? He was-"

"Yes. It would seem so." James and Erik (apparently that's his name) are having something like the conversations Steve walks in on Tony and Jarvis happening, like they're talking about things that everyone should be able to follow and yet no one is. "I never would have guessed."

"The arm?"

"Exactly the same metal. Extraordinary."

Steve coughs. "Feeling like clueing the rest of us in, James?"

"James?" Erik asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Old name," James says with a shrug, and goes back to grabbing his beer. "You're the one who lost to a guy with a metal arm."

"I was trying to save the President."

"And you still lost."

Bucky moves over to stand by Steve's elbow, a deep frown on his face. "You have any clue what these guys are talking about, Steve?"

"No."

It takes three rounds of drinks before James stops asking them to call him Logan, and Erik explains that he was one of the prisoners they saved back in the war, and Bucky asks again how he remembers Erik's face from a building in Texas and James sighs. And Steve learns how they had a mutant President and the man who failed to save him spent ten years in prison for it before being broken out by James, and Bucky starts blaming himself, and then they both learn that Erik can control metal and was already a terrorist at the time he was sentenced, so going to prison was really something he needed anyways. They toast Peggy, and James tells them about how he ran some missions with her during the SSR days. And James teaches Steve that he's not the only man who can't remember living through the 80s and that not being able to get drunk means that you end up watching over two old men as they sing Disney songs and talk about how hot Texas can really get.

Steve gets a call the next day from a kind British professor who apologizes for his "husband's terrible behaviour," while in the background Erik yells about the students sticking spoons to his forehead again.


End file.
